The UK podcast company’s intended $185 million “reverse takeover” deal of the California-based Triton Digital has been withdrawn, as the former was unable to raise the necessary funds to complete the process….

In case you missed it: Pocket Casts, a well-regarded third party podcast app, has been jointly acquired by NPR, WNYC Studios, WBEZ, and This American Life. The announcement was made yesterday.

Pocket Casts, which was owned by an Australian mobile app developer called Shift Jelly, will operate as an independent company separate and apart from any of the organizations that’s part of the joint acquisition. An NPR spokesperson told me that the company will not operate as a non-profit….

Back in February, the Financial Times reported on a $185 million deal between Audioboom, the UK podcast company, and Triton Digital, the US digital audio technology and advertising company. It’s a “reverse takeover,” a move typically deployed by a private company (in this case, Triton Digital, which is owned by the private equity group Vector Capital) to acquire a public company (Audioboom is listed on London’s alternative investment market) without having to go through the costly rigmarole of actually going public….

Audioburst secures a $4.6 million strategic investment from Samsung Ventures. You might remember Audioburst from the newsletter I wrote on November 7, 2017, which used the company’s endeavor to create a “screen-free, speech-based technology that enables search and interaction with audio” — that is, Google, but for Audio — as a springboard towards a broader discussion about how a voice-first computing world will feel like, and how that world will account for questions of discovery and distribution. (A world that feels particularly fraught for publishers, I might add.)

Wondery raises $5M in Series A funding. The news went public yesterday, and it sees a fundraising round led by Greycroft’s Alan Patricof (investor in Axios, The Skimm, and Newscred), Lerer Hippeau (investor in Axios, Food52, BuzzFeed, etc.), and Advancit Capital (Maker Studios, Headspace). Other participants in the round include: BAM Ventures, Water Tower Ventures, Fox Networks Group, BDMI, Michael Kassan, and Stanley Shuman.